Mepham High School boasted five Intel Science Research Badge winners. They are, front row, from left, Masooma Kazmi, Corryn Chaimowitz, Connor Garet and Nicole Altomare, and back row, far right, Corey Wald. They were joined here by Mepham Principal Michael Harrington, back row, far left, and science research advisers Lorilee Geraci and Dr. David Kommor.

The majority of participants, Kazmi said, were able to ascertain that the horse had lost a race by looking at the photograph, but could not do so by reading the passage. Therefore, she concluded, visual cues are more powerful than the written word, information that applies to any number of fields, from education to advertising.

Kazmi is president of the English and math honor societies and a member of the national, history, science and Spanish honor societies. She is a member of the badminton team, a peer tutor and a volunteer in the Nassau University Medical Center’s emergency room, where she assists doctors and nurses.

She said she hopes to attend SUNY Stony Brook, Columbia or Cornell.

Corey Wald, 17

North Bellmore

Wald, 17, loves sports. He played Little League baseball as a child. Now he is a fan of pro baseball, football, basketball and hockey. So it was only natural that he would combine his loves of sports and science when conducting his Authentic Science Research project.

Teachers at Mepham describe Wald as a master of mathematics. He conducted a statistical analysis of the effects of cloud cover on how well — or poorly — baseball games are played. He got the idea from a Kent State University master’s thesis, “The Impact of Cloud Cover on Major League Baseball,” published by graduate student Wesley Kent in 2004.

Wald examined a variety of variables, from pitching to hitting to fielding, and found that batters were negatively affected by bright sun. His study, which was contained in monstrous spreadsheets, reinforced the conclusions Kent reached in his study.

Wald is vice president of the Students Against Destructive Decisions club and a member of the national, English, social studies, math, science and French honor societies. He is a regular participant in Mepham’s Elite program, which offers short after-school classes to enrich students’ learning. His favorite class, he said, was a one-day seminar in which he dissected a pig.

He said he hopes to study biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University or the University of Pennsylvania this fall.